We all know that South Africa is a country with amazing potential, potential that is waiting to be realised. And we all know that although great things happen in South Africa everyday, the process to a well-functioning, stable and culturally harmonious country is a process of three steps forward, two steps back. In part because of our plethora of seemingly impossible-to-solve social problems. And in part because of the mindsets held on to by people, bodies and organisations, who do not wish to move forward in the way that we do, who are holding on to dreams of a different South Africa.

Usually, we blame the government. Blah blah, fifteen years of democracy and where is the man in the street left? Blah blah, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Blah blah, BEE, AA, no future for whites (as if!) and so it goes on. You’ve been to that dinner party, you might have even taken part in that conversation. Truth is, the government truly has way underperformed. Through corruption, racism and self-serving enrichment, it has betrayed the trust of its voters, many of whom will never vote against them. The South Africa that they are dreaming of and working towards is one driven forward by the gravy train – one where taxpayers sponsor their lifestyles and, dare I say it, the ANC is the only party allowed. But in my eyes, the government is not the primary obstacle in our way.

I recently had the enormous displeasure of meeting a mother of one of my friends. Ouma is from Bloemfontein and in her late sixties. She cuts her hair short in the accepted ouma style and interferes with how her grandchildren are brought up. None of this was what I took offence against. Neither did I take offence when she wouldn’t believe I could understand Afrikaans just because I had not greeted her in it (ok, maybe a little). But it was in a kitchen right around the world, where she loudly took umbrage to the fact that “all civil servants are now black”, “we need a white government, or South Africa will never work” and deliberated on the differences of black people living in the city of Bloemfontein and those living in the farmlands around it — “they are still nomads, you see”. That is when I walked out of the kitchen. The worst part is that I know she was holding back. If there was only one of her, we could laugh it off. But there are so many. She is a cliche made true – that aptly called apartheid dinosaur. They aren’t always white and aged, they come in many forms.  It is these people, that hanker after the “old days”, that refuse to open their minds to the effects of apartheid on other people and see differences in pigment amounts and diversity of culture as dangerous. We like to think that this is a breed that is changing, evolving, dying out. Unfortunately, not so. The amount of them that still exist, the intensity of their hate and bitterness and their refusal to change render them the biggest threat to true transformation.